"For many of these post-college spring revelers, golf is the beard --
that is,
ostensibly the main attraction, and a convenient excuse to spouses and
significant others left at home.

I've heard "beard" since the early 80's in the sense of a gay male's female
escort or wife. I.e., beard = something used as a disguise or "cover." For
example, I recalling hearing it used disparagingly of Elton John's wife when
he got married, briefly, in about 1986 if I recall.

So "like" is banned. So what's new?
I ban words in class all the time, benevolent dictator that I am. The words
"opinion" (for its misuse as "feeling") and "as" (for its ambiguity) are
banned regularly. Also, students are issued one exclamation point per
semester, which they can use or not use, as they wish. It cuts down on
comic strip-style writing.
akra

what's new is that they're trying to regulate speech, rather than
writing (but we all know that that's been done before too. i remember
the nuns telling us all the time "'ain't' isn't a word because it isn't
in the dictionary." then i grew up and realized they gave us defective
dictionaries in order to make their point).

in my classes, the word "society" is banned. (i'd make exceptions if
anyone in my classes ever had a reason to use the word, but they don't.)
i'm considering instituting corporal punishment for anyone who writes
the phrase "in today's society". they're also not allowed to begin any
sentence with "the dictionary defines X as".

a colleague and i are trying to come up with a good list of banned
words/phrases for undergraduate papers, so i'd like to hear what others
have banned. if this is too far off topic for the list, please respond
to me directly.